The United States has warned that there is no “single capability” that can tip the Ukrainian war in Kiev’s favor after President Volodymyr Zelensky called on Western countries to allow their military to use long-range weapons to attack Russia. Speaking at a summit of Ukraine’s allies at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, Zelensky on Friday renewed his call for Western countries to supply more long-range missiles and lift restrictions on their use on targets such as airfields inside Russia. But U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin pushed back against the idea that allowing strikes deep into Russia would be a game changer, saying Washington and its allies would continue to strongly support Ukraine. “No single capability can be decisive in this operation,” Austin told reporters at the end of the meeting. He said Russia has already moved aircraft firing glide bombs into Ukraine out of range of U.S.-supplied Atakmi missiles.
President Volodymyr Zelensky also expressed concern about Western policies and the pace of arms deliveries: “Currently, we hear that your long-range policy has not changed, but we see a shortage of missiles and a change in cooperation with Atakum, Storm Shadow and Scalp,” he said.
Austin announced at Ramstein an additional $250 million in U.S. military aid to Ukraine. Other aid includes Germany pledging to provide Kiev with 12 additional self-propelled howitzers and Canada announcing it would send 80,840 surplus small unarmed air-to-surface rockets and 1,300 warheads in the coming months.
Officials said Russian forces struck the central-eastern Ukrainian city of Pavlograd on Friday, killing one person and wounding 64, including several children. The Ukrainian Air Force said five Iskander ballistic missiles were fired from Russian territory at Pavlograd in the Dnipropetrovsk region. The injured included five minors, including a nine-year-old girl and two boys, aged 11 and 4, the region’s governor, Sergey Rysak, said. “Several businesses in the city were damaged in the rocket attack. More than 30 high-rise buildings, one kindergarten and 27 shops were damaged,” he added. The attack caused “fires in several parts of the city,” including apartment buildings in a high-rise building. Russia regularly attacks Pavlograd, which is home to a chemical plant that produces explosives.
In a separate attack in the northern border town of Sumy, Russian forces bombed the village of Krasnopilya on Friday, killing a 66-year-old woman in her home and wounding four others, local prosecutors said.
The Russian Defense Ministry said on Friday that Russian forces had taken control of the village of Zhuravka in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, a claim that could not be independently verified.
Hundreds of residents of the western Ukrainian city of Lviv gathered at a church on Friday to mourn three sisters and their mother who were killed in a Russian attack that killed seven civilians and wounded more than 50 in Wednesday’s drone and missile attack on a residential area of Lviv. Among the dead were 43-year-old Evhenia Bazilevich and her three daughters, Yarina, 21, Daria, 18, and Emilia, 7.
Any Iranian transfer of ballistic missiles to Russia would be a “dramatic escalation” in the Ukraine war, the United States said Friday, following reports that the two countries have deepened ties over arms transfers in recent weeks. Reuters reported last month that Russia expects an imminent delivery of hundreds of Fas-360 short-range ballistic missiles from Iran and that dozens of Russian military personnel are receiving training in Iran on satellite-guided weapons for use in the Ukraine war. The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Iran has delivered the short-range missiles to Russia, citing unnamed U.S. officials.
The French Defense Ministry said it would use 1.4 billion euros ($1.5 billion) of revenues from frozen Russian assets to fund the purchase of military equipment for Ukraine. “Together with other (EU) member states, the Ministry of Defense… will participate in the implementation of a new package of support for Ukraine from the European Peace Facility,” the ministry said on Friday. The European Commission in Brussels has given the go-ahead for “the rapid procurement of priority supplies from French industry,” including ammunition, artillery and air defense guns, the ministry added. Around 200 billion euros worth of Russian assets have been frozen across the EU since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Ukrainian prosecutors said they had opened an investigation into the alleged shooting by Russian forces of three Ukrainian soldiers who surrendered on the eastern front near Pokrovsk, the main base of the Russian offensive. In the latest of a number of similar incidents reported by Ukraine, the prosecutor’s office said in a Telegram post on Friday that the incident took place after Russian forces attacked a trench used as a hiding place for Ukrainian troops on Aug. 27.